


Transparency

by CynKLBouns



Category: Star Wars Legends: Knights of the Old Republic, Star Wars Legends: Knights of the Old Republic II: The Sith Lords
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-12
Updated: 2015-08-12
Packaged: 2018-04-14 10:10:20
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,597
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4560618
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CynKLBouns/pseuds/CynKLBouns
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She teaches him to cheat at cards, he asks fair questions, and the Force has a sense of humor.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Transparency

“What’s this?”

“That is a Pazaak deck,” she informed him. “My personal one.”

“You have your own?” Atton looked at it sourly. He knew his own decks off by heart, which was likely why she brought her own to this party.

“Credits were tight sometimes,” she shrugged with a smirk. “Not much call for broken Jedi out beyond the Rim, but there are plenty of drunk idiots who like staring at my chest more than counting cards.”

“For shame,” he chastised mockingly. “I thought you were going to teach me something. I hope it isn’t taking advantage of gullible idiots, because I’ve got news for you sister, I can already do that just fine on my own.”

“I doubt you’d pull of a low-cut shirt quite a well as I did. But I figured it was only fair- you taught me a trick for fighting against Jedi, I’ll teach you a trick for playing Pazaak.”

“Alright, I’ll bite. Are we playing, then?”

“Sure,” she leisurely shuffled the deck. “Or, rather, you’re going to play a variation of it that I came up just for your thick skull.”

“You shouldn’t have,” he returned dryly. “What are the rules?”

“You can pick whichever cards you want from the entire deck until you hit exactly twenty. The catch is, you’re going to play it blind until you hold.” With a practiced motion, she spread the deck face down in front of him.

“I’m supposed to guess?”

She rested her chin on her hands, elbows on her thighs. Her face was the picture of anticipatory giddiness. “Guessing is such a crude, uncertain term. I want you to _cheat_.”

He looked between the spread of cards and her expectant expression. “You want me to use the Force to see the cards.”

“I always knew you were smarter than you let on. Go ahead.”

“I knew that would bite me in the ass someday.” He stared at the cards, unsure where to even start. He knew how to count cards, memorizing the ones remaining in the deck as the game progressed. But he had no clue what any of these were. For all he knew, they were all fives, or they were all odd numbers, though knowing her it was a probably perfectly legitimate deck.

He hated those.

“You’re thinking too hard about how to get around it. There’s no trick- you just have to see what the cards are.”

“You wanna demonstrate? For all I know, it’s not even something you can do and I’m making an idiot of myself for shits and giggles.”

She shrugged, and reached out lazily, picking up five different cards from seemingly random places, and then fanned them out for him. Three, nine, five, another five, and minus two. Twenty.

“There are easier permutations in that deck,” she shrugged, tucking the cards away from the main spread. “Reach out. Trust your intuition, and stop thinking so damned hard.”

He looked at the cards warily. How was he supposed to reach out? They were pieces of paper. Was the Force supposed to whisper the numbers to him or something? He stared at the card squarely in front of him, and tried to relax. The random number that came to mind was nine, so he pulled it out of the deck and let it lay separate.

Her face betrayed nothing. She just continued to watch as he pulled two more cards.

“What do you think they are?” she asked just as he was about to turn them over.

It took him a second to even remember. “Nine, ten, and one. Makes twenty.”

“Assuming that’s true. Are you sure?” her eyes narrowed in mischievous doubt.

“Did we start laying down stakes when I wasn’t looking?” He didn’t like being goaded, so he bit the blaster bolt and turned the cards over.

A three, a ten, and a seven.

“Well, you got twenty, and one of them _was_ a ten. I’ll call that ‘Beginner at Force’s luck’,” she said cheerfully. “Maybe we _should_ start betting, it might give you better motivation.”

“No credits,” he reminded her.

“Alright, how about this. You lose, and you’ll get nothing. But win, and I mean correctly tell me every single card you put down as well as hit twenty, and I’ll… oh, I don’t know. Give you credits.”

“You should already be paying me a salary.”

“Next you’ll mention insurance, tax breaks, and a retirement plan,” she met his eyes and quickly added, “You’re not getting any of those.”

“Then how about this- I win, and I get a kiss.”

She wrinkled her nose. “How quaint. Alright, progress should be rewarded, I guess. If you manage to do it correctly by the time I feel like leaving, I’ll oblige.”

“Best training ever,” he grinned down at the cards, but it twisted into a grimace as they continued to be perfectly opaque.

He gathered up the cards to reshuffle them. “So not that I’m not overjoyed at this turn of fate, but why are you teaching me to cheat at Pazaak using the Force?”

“It’s only an exercise. I have absolute faith that you wouldn’t abuse the trick at a real table.”

“Right, banish the thought.”

“At least only cheat jerks out of their money, that’s all I ask,” she chuckled, “I can just hear Kreia now, ‘To see the Force reduced to swindling, it is most disturbing!’”

“You don’t seem to mind.”

“I think there are worse things to be using the Force for,” she shrugged. “But you know that.”

“Actually, can I talk to you about that? While I have your undivided attention and the blond kid isn’t popping out from behind corners.” He lay the cards down and stared at them again.

“About what?” she raised her eyebrows. “Swindling? Unless you’re looking for advice on low-cut blouses, you probably know more about it than I do.”

“As long as you model. But I meant talk about the Dark Side.”

“Oh.” She rubbed at the back of her neck, and then sighed. “Well, I’m not that good at this lecture- Vrook tended to drive the point home better and guilt you into the next decade at the same time. But I guess I’ll have to do. Is there anything specific you want to ask?”

He thought about it for a second. The familiar edges of Pazaak cards and the low sound of them sliding was comforting, like an anchor. It was easier to think of the subject in a detached way. “You don’t seem too concerned about the Dark Side. Most of the Jedi I’ve met before tended to constantly bring it up, usually as a warning. Or like some old nursery rhyme that they remember but don’t really get.”

“That unfortunately tends to be the case,” she nodded. “A lot of my peers didn’t really comprehend what the Dark Side was, and that let to what I can only describe as overzealous preaching. We’re told that anger and hatred leads to it, given a wordy philosophical explanation, and then trusted to control those kinds of basic emotions without really knowing why or what. No amount of meditation is going to teach you how to do that when you’re at odds with something.”

“So what _is_ it, then? Five. From where I was standing, it stopped mattering who was more of an ass. In fact, at least the ones that ended up as Sith did something about the war instead of just ignoring it. Or did they think that as long as they don’t do anything their hands are clean?”

“I don’t know,” she spread her arms. “We had a lot of conspiracy theories going before we joined the war, but the Council never revealed their great master plan.”

“Sounds like a pretty blurry line from Jedi to Sith, then.”

“I guess it might be. Kreia claims the Dark is just the other side of the same coin from the Light side. There are as many precise definitions as there are heads willing to risk the headache thinking about it too hard.”

“That’s maddeningly unhelpful. No wonder so many of them broke, if they didn’t even know when they stopped being Jedi. Three.” He paused for a second. “What the hell, seven.”

“Well, I always liked the practical aspects over the philosophical,” she smirked. “And in practice… Dark Jedi give into the darker side of emotions in a drive for power over others. They use it to fuel the flashy powers like lightning and insanity fields. Hatred is always easier than forgiveness, and I guess it might feel like an efficient trade-off for them.”

“Five. Is this right?”

“Not even close,” she barely glanced at the cards. Turning them over, he sighed with disappointment. Four tens. “Kavar liked to say that the Force has a sense of humor. I do believe it’s taunting you right now.”

“Great, now even the Force is laughing at me,” he grumbled, reshuffling the cards again. “I did notice the Jedi didn’t use lightning the way Sith tended to. It seems like it’d be useful.”

“Atton…” she leaned back in the chair, hands folding behind her head. He didn’t even try keeping his eyes off the curve of her chest, momentarily forgetting the game. “It’s useful for _killing_. In fact, it’s something like a manifestation of killing intent. It’s what you get when you command the Force to make someone suffer.”

“So you _can’t_ use it, or you _won’t_?”

She freed one hand, and stretched it out to him. The next second he yelped as a faint cackle of electricity touched his hand. “That was unnecessary! Ow!” he shot her a betrayed glance, and made sure there were no marks. There weren’t- the shock was no stronger than ambient static. The start was worse than the pain.

“That’s the extent of what I’m willing to do,” she returned her arm back behind her head. “Because I don’t hate you. In fact, you’re downright tolerable most days.”

“No, stop, you’re embarrassing me.”

“Point is, if I started thinking of all the reasons I should hate you, like your past, your smart mouth, the fact that you get water all over the ‘fresher after you shower, or the way you stare at my chest, then I could get myself into enough of a frenzy to maybe paralyze you. Even then, I don’t think I’d feel anything stronger than annoyance at you.

Now imagine I did hate you. Not even for anything you did, but simply because you exist. I hated you so much that the fact that you still drew breath made me furious. And as you continued existing, I hated you more and more, and the more I wanted you to die screaming. You can probably remember how that kind of torture looks.”

He shivered, “I remember well enough.”

“My point is, I can’t get directly destructive powers to work right- I simply don’t have it in me to hate things to that degree, no matter what. I get mildly irritated sometimes, but that’s it.”

“Right, the way you shouted at the docks official was ‘mildly irritated’?”

“Well, when in Nar Shaddaa…” she smirked. “It was just fun- no actual intent behind it.”

“Three, six, one, ten.”

“Try again.”

Three ones and a minus three. Wow. Just… wow.

“But doesn’t that mean the Dark Side _is_ stronger?” he sighed as he continued to reshuffle.

“Strength is relative,” she snorted. “A full-fledged Dark Jedi can kill you, or paralyze you, or leave you a drooling vegetable. If that is what it means to be strong, then yes, they’ve got it down. On the other hand, they can’t bring people back from the brink of death, or inspire anything but fear, or perform delicately intricate work with the Force. They won’t make true friends, and their allies are only people they haven’t killed yet in their stampede to some notion of power.”

“A charging boma versus a really fast gizka,” he hummed, looking at the card. Five. He couldn’t resist flipping it over to confirm, and was again disappointed. “My credits are on the boma.”

“A gizka,” she repeated with thoughtful humor. “No… that’s not a good comparison. It’s not just finesse- as I hear it, some Sith Lords can sharpen their power to a fine point as well as any Jedi.”

“I meant that it won’t fight back, and if on the off chance it does, it has no teeth worth a damn. Eventually the boma will stomp it into the ground.”

“If you think that, then maybe I’m not explaining this right. Or are you just calling me a harmless pacifist?”

“I would _never_. Still, isn’t it more effective to have at least some boma-esque tricks up your sleeve? Considering how many people are out to get you an’ all. Or at least have someone on hand who can do them.”

“What, like you?” she leaned forward onto the divide between their chairs, chin once again resting on her hand. “And how do you see that going? Which hatred are you going to dredge up to fuel it?”

“I could just hate the Sith enough for it,” he offered, though there was something in her tone that made her question feel like a trap. “They’ve been chasing us all over the place, and they seem pretty intent on killing you and destroying everything.”

“Right. You’re just going to hate the Sith because they tried to kill us,” she agreed. “Like Bao-Dur hates the Mandalorians. But as you know, hate isn’t something you can turn on and off. Eventually, it’ll drive you to search for Sith, the way you searched for Jedi. And you’ll find them in the remnants of the Jedi Civil War, in prisons and on the run. You’ll take the same sadistic pleasure in killing them slowly, in _breaking_ them. Not to turn them, because you can’t torture someone to turn to the Light, but simply because you hate them.”

“Well, they are the enemy,” he defended.

“Uh-huh. Like the Jedi were the enemy to you at some point.”

“You’re twisting my words.”

“They didn’t need much twisting, trust me,” she sighed. “Atton, when you let yourself hate something, and I mean truly _hate_ , you’re opening the door to cruelty, overwhelming anger, and to the endless pursuit of death. You stop defending others, and you simply kill. Rage twists the most noble of logic. It isn’t a tool to be used while still on the Light side.”

“What about Revan?”

“Revan?” she blinked at the unexpected turn of the conversation. “Far be it from me to guess at the intentions of the great and powerful Revan. Perhaps she attempted to use the Dark Side to some noble end, but I hear she was quite horrified with what she did once she turned back. I don’t envy her, and she’s hardly an ideal to strive for. Not anymore.”

“Alright, I get it. Dark Side is bad,” he gave in. “But if it is stronger, than how are you supposed to do anything against it?”

“I seem to be managing okay so far,” she bristled. “Besides, I’ve always preferred precision over brute force. I don’t want to be commanded by the whim of something as destructive as hate. It hurts to watch people spiral into it, thinking they can control it only to end up as an unrecognizable husk on a warpath. That’s why no matter how naïve you think it is, I always forgive the worst of people. Including you.”

“But that’s my point, aren’t you _worried?_ I’ve been on that side before so it wouldn’t even be spiraling, just remembering old habits.” He shifted uncomfortably. The cards stilled in his hands, their game forgotten.

“If I expected to worst of you, then I would be more likely to see it,” she shrugged. “If you did fall… well… you know why you turned away from it once. I have faith you’ll remember it in the future.”

“But it would be too late for you.”

“Would it?” she smiled, and there was something very bitter in that twist of her lips. “Logic becomes twisted by hate, and I imagine you’d also twist your reasons for protecting me. Even if that meant making me watch as you killed everyone else to gain compliance. You might even keep me like a bird in a cage, safe and sound, in the hopes of training me to sing for you. I wonder if-”

The deck sprayed under the pressure, cards twirling in all directions. His face was ashen, and he looked distinctly ill. “Enough. You made your point, just shut up.”

“Too far?” she asked with sympathy in her voice. “Sorry. But the point stands. You know what you’d do at your worst, and you don’t want to end up there. That’s enough for me.”

He began to gather up the cards again, when a thought struck him. “What would you be at your worst, then? Not tipping the waitress? Giving the beggars only two credits instead of five?”

She tilted her head. “I’ve destroyed an entire world to end a war. What do you think I’d do to start one?”

“That was a quick answer. Spent much time thinking about it?”

“What can I say, I’ve had a decade to think. There were bound to be a couple moments of clarity that I dedicated to speculation and self-pity,” she chuckled.

“Did you ever hate them, though? The Mandalorians, I mean.”

“No.”

“No? Just, no? Not even a little?”

“If you’re looking for tale of recovered morality, you’re not going to find one in my past,” she crossed her arms, leaning away. “I did what I thought was… well, maybe not _right,_ but the best that I could do. I trusted-“ she suddenly shut up, and he recognized the abrupt silence and the pinched expression as an accidental slip of something she didn’t want to talk about.

“Revan, right? You trusted Revan, like the rest of us,” he prodded anyway, perhaps against his own survival instincts. He felt justified, considering her earlier ‘example’ of the Dark Side.

She looked him in the eye, holding steady. “That is a can of worms you don’t want to open, Atton. Leave it. Trust me, there is nothing I haven’t already mulled over myself: it’s a pointless strand of thought.”

“If you say so. But you’re telling me in all the time that you were at war, you never hated the enemy for killing your friends?”

“Don’t presume to tell me how to grieve,” her voice took an icily formal quality that reminded him of Kreia. “I’ve lost more people than you have killed, sometimes at the hands of people who were lost to their own hatreds, and sometimes by my own sacrifice. You yourself probably killed dozens of people I used to call friends. But I refuse to perpetuate the cycle of murder out of vengeance, and that is not weakness. I never killed a single person out of anger, and I never murdered when I could show mercy.”

He couldn’t help his next words. “Right, and does that help you sleep at night?”

“It doesn’t,” she deflated a little, and her eyes just looked sad. “I think something would be truly wrong with the universe if people like me could sleep well at night. But at least I know I’ve made my decisions without tainting the intentions with anger and hate.”

“Doesn’t that make it worse? You have no one but yourself to blame.”

“Let me put it this way- you chose to kill Jedi because you hated them. I chose to fight a horrific war to protect the ones left standing after all of it was done. Blaming either decision on anyone but ourselves is just as sure of a sign that we’ve learned nothing.”

“Then I don’t get how you can forgive me, just like that. Because you have to? That doesn’t sound like a sincere reason.”

“The irony of you doubting my sincerity…” She frowned, and crossed her legs while she searched for words. “It’s not that I have to. Or, I suppose if I was a Jedi, then that would be part of my code. But believe it or not, I don’t hold grudges.”

“That’s your reasoning? You just don’t hold grudges and that’s it?” he stared at her like she was never-before seen species in a zoo.

“What do you want from me? A ritual song and dance to cleanse yourself of evil intent?” her tone dripped with irony. “It’s just the way I am. Call it apathy, if you want, because it’s pretty damn close to it. I simply don’t care about things that aren’t immediately in front of me.”

“That’s a lie if I ever heard one,” he snorted a laugh. She glared. “Don’t give me that. We both know you care more than can be healthy.”

“Oh?” there was a strange note of tension to her voice.

“Well, yeah, I mean you didn’t even think about it before helping out those refugees, or running the mercs off from Khoonda. You wouldn’t risk your life so much if you didn’t care.”

Strangely, that made her relax again. “Maybe that’s just the way I’m wired. Self-sacrifice is a common trait amongst Jedi, you know. Doesn’t just go away because I was exiled.”

“What’s the point of sacrifice if you don’t give a damn? That’s backwards.”

She smiled. “Now who’s getting all philosophical… Assuming you’re right, what difference does it make? I never asked you to enable me and my caring, self-sacrificing ways.” The last part was intoned with self-deprecating sarcasm.

“Can’t stick around without enabling you,” he rolled his eyes. “It’s like everywhere we go there’s some neatly divided problem that you just can’t resist getting involved in.”

“You could leave.”

“Right now? Just let me grab a thicker jacket, it’s a little chilly outside.”

She laughed, startled.

“Just give me a straight answer. No jokes, no vague Jedi bullshit. Did you only forgive me because you don’t want to open the door to the Dark Side?”

She tapped her fingers on her leg, eyes idly looking out into the hyperspace outside.

“Fine, no bullshit: I forgave you because you’re right. A part of me understands you. You were a sadistic murderer, and I still brought more deaths than you could hope to in a lifetime. And if we don’t find a way to move past that, then I will remain a war criminal, just as much as you’ll remain a murderer. So… yeah, I forgive you.”

“But the million credit question is, do you forgive yourself?”

She just smiled, and it didn’t reach her eyes. Instead on answering, she said, “Did I tell you what you wanted to know?”

“Sure, though I don’t think I could do what you do. With the whole ‘inner peace’ and not getting angry thing, I mean. If that means I could go dark again, you should keep an eye on me.”

“Mm. Somehow, I don’t think you’ll let me down.”

“Jedi precognition?” he asked skeptically.

She smiled. “Call it a woman’s intuition.”

“Force help us all. So what does your womanly intuition tell you about the other strapping lads on this boat? That you’re scraping the bottom of the barrel?”

“Is that a serious question, or do I need to smack you for implying I have shitty standards?”

“The less violent one, I guess.”

She shifted, lifting her crossed legs up onto the locked console.

“Bao-Dur has a lot of anger in him. It’s hard to tell with the way he talks, but it’s like a storm inside a force field. Still, he wants to control it, and that speaks volumes for the future. Mandalore is a finicky one, but I think I understand him well enough to know he won’t betray me. For now, anyway.”

“I said strapping lads, not old ruins in armor.”

She grinned at the joke. “I’m older than you too, but considering the way you’re eyeing my legs, you don’t really seem to care about that. Considering the way _he_ eyes my legs…”

“What?!”

“I’m kidding. He might be, but damned if I can tell with the helmet.”

“So what about the Disciple, then?”

“Ah, Mical,” she drew his name out softly, with carefully hidden fondness. “He eyes my legs too- then blushes and starts stuttering when I mention it.”

Atton couldn’t help the laugh that broke out at that, imagining the poor soul’s face when she bluntly said something like that. “Guess he doesn’t get out much.”

“His heart is in the right place, and he’s working on the rest. I think he’s more at peace now that I’m teaching him, as he wanted me to do a decade ago. Cut it out with the jealousy face, Atton. He couldn’t take me down from the pedestal long enough for what you’re thinking to happen.”

“So he’s sticking around because of a bad case of hero worship? And that doesn’t bother you?”

“Well, better that then delving into a self-destructive inferiority complex and harboring bitter resentment at me.” She shrugged. “If he wants to idolize me, then that’s his prerogative. He’ll grow out of it.”

“Somehow I really doubt that.”

“Then I don’t know what you’re worried about. I wouldn’t take advantage.”

“I’m not worried about a damned thing.”

“Right, the passive aggression towards him has nothing to do with that Thing that we don’t talk about. My mistake.” She pulled her legs towards her, fluidly levering herself to stand up. “Keep practicing with those cards.”

“Don’t patronize me. Five, four, three, eight.”

She kissed him before he could turn them over. The scent of burnt ozone and Dantooine grasslands assaulted his nose so suddenly he started, but she remained close until he remembered to close his eyes and reciprocate. She kissed with unhurried tenderness, coaxing him into an almost lazy pace- there was nothing inexperienced or sloppy about her movements. Heat flared inside his chest with a vengeance, and his fingers closed around the folds of her clothes without daring to pull her closer.

She eventually pulled away, her expression thoughtful as she licked her lips. With distantly smug feeling, he noticed her eyes seemed just a little dazed. She carefully extracted his hands from her clothes, and put them down onto his lap.

“Guess incentives do work with you,” she smiled at him in a way that made him want to pull her back down, and made to leave.

He finally got the nerve to ask her the burning question just seconds before she could step outside the cockpit.

“What about love?”

“What about it?” There was a funny little note in her voice, a tone higher than usual.

“I heard that Jedi aren’t allowed to love. How does that lead to the Dark Side?”

She was silent for long enough that he had to make sure she hadn’t just left without answering. But she continued to stand there, frozen in the doorway.

“Well?” he prompted.

“Hell if I know,” she finally responded. “But personally I subscribe to the Jolee Bindo school of thought.”

“Which is…?”

“I’ll tell you next time.” Somehow, he knew she was smiling to herself even as her back was turned to him.

And then she left.

Atton looked at the cards in his hands, and picked a random one out. “Four.” It was a six. He flicked it to the far corner of the room, snorting to himself. “Real funny, Force. You can’t expect me to concentrate after that, can you?”


End file.
